Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

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Monthly Archives: October 2009

calbuzz reports on a debate between steve poizner and tom campbell in the OC last night. mostly, i don’t care, because it’s early yet in the gubernatorial race. this, however, brought on the rageahol:

Campbell and Poizner engaged in a friendly series of pretty substantive and fairly specific exchanges on issues, ranging from tax cuts – Poizner wants big ones right away while Campbell wants to cut more spending first – to their mutual dislike of public employee unions – “When the economy goes down (government workers) don’t feel the same pain,” Poizner claimed

um, what? no, seriously. WTF? i am one of the lucky state employees–still employed, not yet furloughed–and let me tell you, i’m still feeling pain. how DARE he stand up there during a year when state employees have faced lay-offs, furloughs, pay cuts, and being paid with IOUs, and say that government workers don’t share the burden of a crashing economy? seriously, how the fuck dare he? STFU, you fucking ignorant asshole.

Rep Steve King (Dickweed-IA) found himself facing the commissioner of the NFL in a hearing on football head injuries, etc. prompted by a recent New Yorker article – so naturally he took the time to grandstand and try to make the moment about Rush Limbaugh. And wtf is “verbal pornography?” I’m pretty sure he just made it up.

You mean Obama played basketball with the UConn womens’ team in April? And the press missed this when they were rushing to indict him as sexist? Shocking.

WASHINGTON — Championship ceremony is a White House standard for sports teams. Shooting hoops with the president, now that’s something to remember.

Moments after Monday’s event in front of the South Portico, President Barack Obama hustled the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team over to the outdoor half-court, away from reporters and cameras.

The president, a former high school player and avid fan who still plays pickup games, prevailed in a brief, impromptu game of P-I-G with a few of the players.

“He was pretty good from 17 feet,” said coach Geno Auriemma. “His shot’s a little unorthodox, but it goes in … He’s got a little bit of that swagger.”

The White House keeps up its attack on Fox News as biased in this video with Valerie Jarrett … Why the White House persists in making this losing argument is anybody’s guess. What’s your theory?

–Baltimore Sun TV Critic / Massive Douchebag David Zurawik, posing to his readers what is perhaps the most clumsily-delivered leading question I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that this fuckwit’s opinion is continually held up as evidence that Fox’s version of this little pissing contest is correct. Yeah… great. Remind me why I’m supposed to care what a TV critic thinks about politics again?

I’m surprised the poor thing hasn’t broken from overuse. Apparently the next fake controversy is about willful misunderstandings of the open-source software concept. Freely-available source code that can then be compiled into a binary like any other program is the same thing as Wikipedia right? Running the white house on open source software means anyone can go in and edit whatever they want at any time right?

No?

Oh.

Here’s Slate with an exceedingly-stupid take on the issue. The choice of software for the WH website is “a political disaster waiting to happen” huh? He might have a point if every bit of potential trouble he describes was something visitors of the site would encounter rather than those programming the fucking thing on the back-end. In other words? He’s essentially saying that the same people making the decision to put in this software will be the ones to turn it into a “political disaster.” Give me a fucking break. If there was the slightest hint of humor anywhere in the article I’d swear it was a satire.

What’s the cost of not showing up to court? For PepsiCo Inc., it’s a $1.26 billion default judgment. A Wisconsin state court socked the company with the monster award in a case alleging that PepsiCo stole the idea to bottle and sell purified water from two Wisconsin men.

Now the company is scrambling to salvage the situation. The damages award was handed down on Sept. 30. PepsiCo filed motions to vacate the order and dismiss the claims on Oct. 13, saying it wasn’t even aware of the lawsuit until Oct. 6.

The litigation began in April when Charles Joyce and James Voigt sued the soft drink maker and two of its distributors, alleging they had misappropriated trade secrets from confidential discussions the plaintiffs had with the distributors in 1981 about selling purified water. The information was illicitly passed to PepsiCo, which used it to develop and sell Aquafina bottled water, the plaintiffs allege in the case filed in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County before Judge Jacqueline Erwin.

Can you imagine the kind of balls it takes to show up in court at the end of a six-month case – after damages have already been awarded – and try to use “I didn’t know I shoulda been here!” as an excuse? I’m sure that’d work out just as well for an average person as it did for Pepsi here.

Obama just signed the Matthew Shephard bill, which has prompted the beginning of a round of tooth-gnashing about thought crime and criminalizing intent from the usual suspects.

Relatively tame so far but I imagine we’ll get a lot more of this by tomorrow. At any rate this just really isn’t complicated or controversial or full of gray areas in any way shape or form. You either harm/kill people for their sexuality or you aren’t affected by this law, it’s that simple. (I don’t know who he’s been hanging out with but one of the commentors on the Townhall piece calls it another piece of legislation that “discriminates against average Americans.” Um, no.)

ed. It’s also revealing that these people only tend to show up when there’s a discussion about whether or not to extend currently-existing hate crime laws to new groups. If we’re going by their actions it really seems that they don’t have a problem with hate crime laws, only gay people. I mean, shouldn’t they be arguing for a total repeal if hatecrime legislation amounts to criminalizing thought? Another point is that the bill’s full name is the “Matthew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act.” I guess it’s less fashionable to be seen speaking out against protecting black folks.

On the other hand, the thing about intent is perfectly reasonable given that our legal system makes no distinction between first and second degree murder, the normal and gross negligent forms of homicide, manslaughter, so on and so forth. It’s not as though homicide (killing) and murder (intentional killing) are codified as distinct crimes or anything, so I can see where people feel comfortable saying that.